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Students, professors reflect on tragedy

Students around the country have sought guidance and support from their teachers in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and those at Tufts are no exception. Professors, though, have an added challenge of determining how best to see their students through this emotional time period, while at the same time accomplishing their original course goals.

Dr. Kathleen Camara, a child development professor, held a class just an hour and a half after she heard about the tragedy. Although she felt shocked, saddened, and frightened by the events, she also thought it was important to draw her "Personal-Social Development" class together and speak about the tragedy.

"I didn't know if I would be able to face my class that day," Camara said. "I told my class that I would be there to talk to them. I urged them not to be alone, and I offered to take home those of them who felt they had no place to go."

Camara and her colleagues discussed their concern for the emotional welfare of their students. In class, she made an effort to maintain a sense of calm by urging her students not to jump to any conclusions about the then-unknown culprits.

"I said 'we have to be very careful about not rushing to judgement and generalizing because of the acts of some,'" Camara said. "We can abhor the acts but we have to be very careful about our response to other people."

Chemistry professor Christopher Morse has more than his scheduled course material on his mind, as the attacks remain in the forefront of his thoughts.

"I'm very pleased that there is an all-out effort to investigate and figure out who is really responsible and who is really involved," Morse said. "In all honesty, I thought [President] Bush would've been the kind of president who would've just started shooting."

Morse had originally called the chemistry department last Tuesday to notify students that he would not be in class that day. Upon further reflection, however, he decided that he wanted to be in class to talk to those students who had decided to attend.

Although President Bacow decided to keep the campus open the day of the attacks so students could discuss the issue in their classes, some feel he made the wrong decision. Junior Chinar Mahadkar attended a full morning of classes on the day of the attacks before she decided that she needed to "go home and watch TV" in the afternoon. Mahadkar said both the students and professor in her 9:30 a.m. class were unclear about the morning's events and proceeded as normal. Her other classes were also held as planned, but Mahadkar said that one of her professors told the class that if any student felt uncomfortable, they were welcome to leave.

"The feeling was that the best way to table this was to just move on," Mahadkar said, adding that the terrorists wouldn't have wanted life to continue as usual.

At the time, Mahadkar didn't realize the severity of the attacks, but in retrospect, she felt that Tufts should have suspended classes.

"It's kind of disrespectful," she said. "It's an American issue that we should be dealing with and mourning over."

Sophomore Steve Liu returned from an early morning class and got the news from his roommate.

"I felt totally numb. It was like all my emotions rushed in - anger, confusion, mourning, regret," Liu said. "I thought about the victims and their families, and how helpless they must have felt."